“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
― Isaac Newton

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Thursday, 22 August 2013

My Magical Place: The Conjuring

I've been watching quite a lot of movies in genres I don't usually dabble in because I now live with a crowd of people who aren't into the things I am and because I like to be open minded about things I watch some of the stuff they do and it's been interesting. I found that I liked features like The Great Gatsby (I could never finish the book) and Dark Zero Thirty. Anyway, I also started watching some horror movies like VHS with one of the guys, which eventually lead to The Conjuring. I'm not the biggest fan of horror movies but some of the B-grade stuff like Slither amuse me to no end.

I approached The Conjuring with an almost fresh set of eyes for what it sets out to do. I vaguely remember seeing The Exorcist and other than that my closest experience with this ritualistic, possession stuff is the Supernatural TV series. The story centres around a married couple, Ed and Lorraine Warren (played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga), who make their living as paranormal investigators. They help a family who are being plagued by a creepload of spirits in the creepy looking house they've just moved into and invested all their money into. It's not like they can move anyway because the spirits haunting them have some powerful dark juju and can follow them around. They are pretty much screwed, really. Ed and Lorraine come in to save the day and shoot a few videos in the process. I actually enjoyed this movie a whole lot: it's well paced and scares you when you least expect it or when you most expect it and still gets you. It is also very beautifully shot. Every scene is hauntingly beautiful, if that makes sense in this context. The music is also brilliantly done and adds a cool ambiance throughout the scary proceedings. I enjoyed watching The Conjuring and then I found myself lying in bed in the dark later on and I realised my wardrobe looks a lot like the one in the movie... I had difficulty sleeping for a few nights.

I recommend this movie and I suggest watching it at midday.

Just as a side note can we all just step back and look at how Patrick Wilson's hair's combed all neatly in every movie he's in. It's quite eerie.

I was struck by a thought whilst watching this movie with the Christian symbolism used to ward off evil spirits or exorcise them. What are the procedures in other religions when demons and other evil spirits decide to take up residence in your home or body? I know from reading The Historian that Islam has a tradition of vampire defence wards. Someone should tell a story about a demon possession scenario from a Jewish or Hindu perspective.

People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of Orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There was never anything so perilous or so exciting as Orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad… To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect along the historic path of Christendom – that would have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure. – G.K. Chesterton

Busy Reading

#marginpoetry #fringeflowertree

I start all my writing in an exam pad and when I get writer's block or just start day dreaming I doodle or write thoughts in the margins. It's #marginpoetry, #fringeflowertree

#1

My muse lives in my heart

Dramatic lil' damsel, is Rose Red

I like having her around though

It gets lonely in my head

I then descend the stair

And visit her in my heart's chambers

#2

I'm a sad person I realise

Thus I write happy words

I write sentences that smile

And paragraphs that grin

"But we had a great time! We got drunk, we got stoned, we got - well one of us got laid, and you nearly did - we had a fight, which we won dammit, and then we ran away . . . holy shit; what more do you want?" - Za, p. 187